Academic journey
Shobu John Mathew read economics at the Higher Institute of Economics in Varna, specialising in international tourism and hotel management. The five-year programme treated tourism not as travel but as an economic and cultural sector — one that connects markets, destinations, airlines, operators, governments and communities — and gave him the grounding in demand, pricing and destination competitiveness that his commercial career would later rest on.
Much of that education happened outside the lecture room. Summer work paid for coach and rail journeys across Europe: Athens and Salonika first, then Belgrade, Budapest, Berlin, Frankfurt, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Geneva, Interlaken, Milan, Rome and London. Each city taught something different about how destinations attract travellers, how transport carries economies, and how service standards shift across cultures. London remains his favourite.
A year of management training at the Sheraton Hotel Balkan in Sofia turned that grounding into practice — rooms, food and beverage, interdepartmental coordination, and the discipline a consistent guest experience demands. He joined Hyatt Hotels in New Delhi in 1991, in an industry still run on fax, telex and handwritten records, where a client relationship was built through follow-up and kept through trust. The first desktop computer reached his office in 1994. Having worked either side of that line, he has kept a practical regard for both relationships and systems.
His Hyatt years included the group's selling programme in Malaysia and orientation at the Grand Hyatt in Bangkok, and were followed by a wider international brief at IHG: business development, sales missions across Europe and Asia, and the trade platforms where destinations, brands and corporate buyers meet — World Travel Market in London, ITB Berlin, Arabian Travel Market. He went on to serve as Director of Sales and Marketing at InterContinental New Delhi; as General Manager for Marketing at Kuoni India, one of the country's leading inbound travel companies, where hospitality opened out into aviation, destination management and national positioning; and as Director of Sales and Marketing for the opening of the first Shangri-La hotel in New Delhi, a launch that asked for market confidence and disciplined execution in equal measure. Vice-presidencies at The Lalit New Delhi and The Zuni Hotels & Resorts followed, and with them a portfolio view of brand alignment, commercial systems and talent.
The most substantial chapter was eight years at Bloom Hotels, through a period in which the group grew from six hotels to more than a hundred. The work covered commercial strategy, feasibility studies, development models, revenue and distribution, market positioning and brand establishment — and, as much as any of it, the building of sales, marketing and revenue teams and of the general managers and senior leaders above them. He took part in the company's 2018 foundation workshop, which set its vision, mission and values at a formative moment; his view is that values are not written statements but decisions, behaviour and conduct.
Teaching has run alongside the commercial career rather than after it: in team reviews, training programmes, business workshops and one-to-one mentoring. He has designed learning and development programmes for senior sales and marketing professionals, drawn from industry practice rather than theory, and is certified in Stakeholder Centered Coaching by Marshall Goldsmith — a method that measures a leader's progress by the feedback of the people around them. He mentors on the PGDM national selection process for the Willingham Institute of Management Development & Research, and advises founders building travel and tourism businesses on models, markets and the discipline of execution.
Today he is the founder of SJM Growth Advisory, where more than three decades of commercial and operating experience go into advising hospitality businesses on growth strategy, brand development, revenue and distribution, market positioning, operational alignment and leadership development.
